This non-provisional patent application is based on provisional patent application Ser. No. 61/401,236 filed on Aug. 10, 2010.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to attachable barriers which prevent objects from falling off edges of surfaces.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Items are often stored on flat surfaces near edges (e.g. on shelves or tables). Unfortunately, such items often fall off of these edges when these surfaces are too small and/or when they have too many items placed upon them. It is well known that this will then often lead to the falling item either breaking or spilling its contents. Expensive and/or hard to replace items may fall and break, or a container of pills may spill onto the floor, all of which can be very frustrating, especially after repeated incidents. Even on surfaces which are properly sized and are storing the correct amount of items, accidents often cause items to be knocked off of an edge. This is particularly common for many types of shelves such as those in medicine cabinets, grocery stores, and garages because these shelves are often crowded with objects, are relatively small, and have no barriers on the edge.
Some shelves (particularly refrigerator shelves) are currently manufactured with a front lip built into their structure and therefore provide some protection against items falling off the front edge of the shelf. However, existing devices and methods for retro-fitting a shelf guard to a previously unguarded shelf are inconvenient, expensive and impractical. There is no current method for attaching inexpensive and effective shelf guards to existing shelves that have open, unguarded edges. Therefore, there remains a need for a cheap-to-manufacture, easy-to-produce, highly effective, and aesthetically appealing shelf guard that is readily adapted to be conveniently and easily attached to any existing shelf or other edge of a surface in order to prevent items stored on the shelf from falling down.